The Indus Valley civilisation is 2,500 years older than previously believed

The Indus Valley civilisation may be even older than initially thought.

A group of researchers in India have used carbon dating techniques on animal remains and pottery fragments to conclude that the Indus Valley settlements could be 8,000 years old—2,500 years older than previously believed.

That could make the Indus Valley settlements, which were spread across Pakistan and northern India, even older than the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisations.

“Our study pushes back the antiquity to as old as 8th millennium before present and will have major implications to the evolution of human settlements in Indian sub-continent,” Anindya Sarkar, a professor at the department of geology and geophysics at IIT-Kharagpur, said in a statement.